24661

Author   petebiddlecombePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 10:58

I thought this would be my first report on a puzzle published on the new club site, but it looks like the last from the old one. It’s definitely my last before the championship, for which there are some informative links after the clue analyses.

This puzzle started pretty well, with BACK- spotted quickly at 1A, followed by all but 5 answers in about 7 minutes, but then slow completion of this group in the SW corner – 18, 22, 16, 21, 24 – my turn for the embarrassment of ending with the hidden word.

Across
1 BACK=defender (soccer rather than Rugby or various other footballs where the backs are nominal defenders but score most of the tries), GROUND = worked hard (think of “grinding away” at an arduous task, or the snooker nickname of Cliff Thorburn)
6 SORT – S from tenniS, OR T from courT
8 BOOKSHOP – easy cryptic def for old hands who see straight through “bound to be sold”
9 AFLOAT = “at sea” – “A float” = an initial supply of change for a shopkeeper/stallholder. Cheeky omission of the indefinite article in the clue, as “A change in store …” would have retained the surface meaning perfectly well.
10 LI(E=European)D – (“pork pie” = lie) seems like our first rhyming slang for a while. “lid” is informal for a hat or crash helmet.
11 APOSTROPHE = (perhaps too)* – officially, it seems there is no apostrophe in Finnegans Wake, matching my old claim that for most “literary knowledge” these days you need no more information than you’d find on the book’s cover. Whether the unorthodox style of the book adds to the clue I have no idea – I’m afraid I never made it through Ulysses, and any other Beckett (Godot excepted) went to the charity shop long ago. literary ignorance deleted
12 I,M=maiden (cricket),PASS(I) ON – leave = “pass on” is to leave in one’s will rather than to shuffle off this mortal coil
14 KINGS = not subjects, and a reference to:
“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things:
Of shoes–and ships–and sealing-wax–
Of cabbages–and kings–
And why the sea is boiling hot–
And whether pigs have wings.”
17 HUMAN – mild cryptic def
19 IN FOR = replacing,MAN = soldier,T – I can’t think of an example where “in for”=replacing without “standing” in front of it. Any offers?
22 CONT(RAVEN)E – for old hands, conte=”short story” is probably the way in here (fewer 5-letter stories than 5-letter birds). I think the def is “dispute with” rather than just “dispute”.
23 A L, A R = alar – a barred-grid puzzle filler word
24 CINEMA = “Modern art” – hidden word – I got too involved in the possible -est meanings from “(thou) art possessed” to notice the letters under my nose
25 BUTCHERS = incompetently ruins – Schubert* – the anag. indicated rather weakly by “pieces”
26 KNOT – 2 meanings, which require you to lift and separate the clue’s “frigate bird”
27 INEBRIATED = (it I need bar)* – an all-in-one
 
Down
1 BOB = bounce, SLEIGH = “slay” = bump off
2 C(LOSE = miss)UP – the def. here seems to be “shot from short distance away” (noun), rather than “from short distance away” (adj.), though to “miss shot” might also be to lose in the right context
3 REHEAR,S(tag)E
4 UNPRONOUNCEABLE = impossible to deliver – PRONOUN=part of speech, in (A clue Ben)* – the arbitrary name helped, but so did “part of speech”
5 (foo)D,EARTH=globe
6 SYLLOGISM – cryptic def., easy for old hands who’ve seen the pun on “premises” before
7 ROAD = “rode” (bulletproof homophone?), HOG (meaning 2, which seemed new to me)
13 AP(ART MEN = male painters)T
15 today’s omission
16 FOR(E)STER – the writers are C S FORESTER (formerly recommended by Mark Goodliffe as a great source for strange words not seen again until they appeared in crosswords) and E M Forster.
18 UTO = out*,PIAN(o) – full detail on the original Utopia here
20 AILMENT = “I lament” with the A=article moved
21 SALAMI = a kind of tactics – the sea battle is Salamis

Championship tips: There are some old ones here (written before I knew about the insistence that we all sit in our seats when we’ve finished solving, and possibly a bit optimistic about the times needed to qualify). Much more at my championship page, or the appropriate Memories page on this site.

Suggested pubs: Sat eve: Kemble Brewery, followed by Curry Corner
Sun: a few weeks ago, Mark Thakkar sugested the Beehive Inn, which is a bit nearer than former haunt the Jolly Brewmaster and gets good ratings. Sounds sensible to me.

Please don’t be the chump who forgets that we’re at Cheltenham College Junior School rather than the Gloucestershire University campus, and has to run half a mile or so to make his preliminary round.

36 comments on “24661”

  1. 19m, also held up (as yesterday) in the SW. While the wordplay for 22ac was obvious the def wasn’t. A co-contributor informs me that the COED has “dispute with etc.”. So fair enough. Didn’t like the cd in 6dn … not one bit; despite shades of Dr Johnson. 17ac was slightly more acceptable where the shades (for me) were of John Arlott who, on arrival in S. Africa and required to fill out a form which asked for his race, wrote “human”.
  2. DNF. Not too bad but hit wall with 4 to get. Aids got me 3 of those but left with ?A?A?I at 21. Never heard of the tactic nor the battle, didn’t know ALAR or CONTE so anticipate chastisement from Jimbo re barred-grids.
    I will pass on PB’s Cheltenham tips.
  3. An interesting puzzle in that as Peter hints and Barry confirms, it’s an easy one if you’ve seen all the devices and references before but quite difficult if you haven’t.

    The APOSTROPHE thing about F-W has appeared before. So has the “premises” clue. I don’t recall “hog” as a motorbike but will now look out for it cunningly disguised in a Mephisto. I shall say nothing more Barry about particularly ALAR other than all the bar crossword solvers will read the clue and write in the answer.

    I found the bottom harder than the top but finished it all slightly quicker than yesterday in just over 20 minutes.

  4. All finished bar two in 12:30-ish, but those last two held me up for another 10 minutes. Glad to see I’m in good company failing to spot the hidden CINEMA, but I’d never heard of SALAMI tactics before and it seemed so unlikely that I didn’t put it in even though I knew the battle and thought of it immediately. In the end I gave up and threw it in anyway, fully expecting it to be wrong.
    1. I guess business speak has its fashions like anything else. When budget cuts (such as those that have been needed in recent times) were required in the ancient times of my youth there used to be discussions about “salami slicing or tactics” as against wholesale butchery. What I wonder is the modern equivalent?
  5. I don’t record my times (I’m too haphazard and disorganised) but finished in one go under 30 minutes (good going for me). That said, I was aware I hadn’t fully grasped wordplay so particular thanks for Peter’s explanations (especially 11).

    I’m still left somewhat bemused by ‘appropriate’ in 6dn. Does this merely mean ‘accurate’ ‘use of premises’ to produce a logically sound ‘syllogism’ or is there something I’ve missed completely?

    1. It’s a rather weak cryptic definition, don’t look for more than that. And next time you see “premises” and a word starting S?L think immediately of today.
  6. All but two this morning on route. I was almost certain of SYLLOGISM (a decent clue, I thought) but couldn’t find a way to crack AFLOAT, trying (among other things) the well known Aolian Sea – that’s how desperate I was. I also considered SYMPOSIUM as being another decent use of premises, but that didn’t help 9ac either. Penny finally dropped at journey’s end.
    Otherwise, a fine challenge, I thought, easier at the top than the bottom.
    Salami tactics made a spectacular entrance in “Yes Prime Minister” with Jim being challenged as to when he would press the button.
    Looking froward to Cheltenham, hoping AFLOAT is not one of the clues.
  7. Finnegans Wake and Ulysses are Joyce not Beckett. Though I knew of the missing apostrophe in the former I think it’s a bit much to assume the knowledge. Also, while Contravene may be in the dictionary as Dispute with, it aint (at all often at any rate) used as such and that should count too. All that said, a good work-out (though Human a bit desperate). I too saw and rejected Salami for far too long; and suffered Cinema’s bamboozlement. But got there in 21.
    1. I studied Joyce at university and even ploughed my way through Ulysses but never got beyond page 1 of Finnegans Wake and had forgotten about the apostrophe if ever I knew about it. However I thought it was reasonably easy to guess from the rest of the clue.
      1. Ulysses is the most wonderful book – hard going in places but full of delights. Finnegans Wake is unreadable really, but I intend to try!
        The song from which Joyce took the name of the book does of course have an apostrophe. In essence you cannot argue with the clue, as there is indubitably an apostrophe in it!
        1. Yes, I’d agree with that. Very hard going but also very rewarding.
          Finnegans Wake is absolutely unreadable. When someone writes a book for such an incredibly tiny audience and even they can’t agree what it’s about you’ve got to start wondering if there’s any point.
  8. Over an hour; so a bit too clever for me, I’m afraid. I managed all but the last four in reasonable time but then had to keep coming back to it. Once the battle was over, however, I have to admit admiring the setter’s craft. My favourite clue for ROAD HOG appeared many years ago: “He won’t let you round his estate.”
  9. No real problems with any of this, although I am not convinced by the first “crazily” in 11ac.

    At 21dn I got the battle but it took a while to recall the tactics. At 16dn I was expecting another novelist I’d never heard of and ran throught the major novelists without much real hope, then when I got to Forster the penny dropped.

  10. Doesn’t it make you sick when these old hands throw things in, expecting it to be wrong, and get it right?! My wall was a bit further down the road than Barry’s, with CONTRAVENE got from aids and ‘Hawaii’ hazarded for the sea-battle. Remember Pearl Harbour? Okay – a bit one-sided for a ‘battle’.

    I hadn’t heard of the divide and conquer SALAMI tactics but am kicking myself nonetheless for missing the ‘shortened’ in the clue as not only do I know about Salamis, I also have it ever imprinted on my brain that it took place in 480 BC. The benefits of having taken Ancient History (the world’s easiest A-Level).

    Delighted that the hidden clue was only my fifth last in, thus beating PB in this regard. Jusy a pity it went in an hour or so after his.

  11. Yesterday was hopeless, today I got it all. Alar went straight in, despite no familiarity with barred-grid puzzles, I saw Salamis, but had to check whether the sausage had anything to do with tactics.

    As I am doing puzzles from the archive, I recognise more and more constructions at first sight. Very rewarding. So once again a big thank you to all the bloggers.

  12. I made good progress in my 15 minutes quality solving time and left home with about half of it completed i.e. most of the top half, the longest word and a few others dotted around down below.

    But it was all uphill from there, not helped by announcements of train delays and people talking very loudly about nothing. I arrived at work with six unsolved, three of which I needed aids for. I’d never have got SYLLOGISM and I had dismissed CONTRAVENE as I didn’t know CONTE = story. ALAR was another unknown. CINEMA was one of the last in (where’s that boot?)and although I’ve heard the expression SALAMI tactics (it comes up in an episode of ‘Yes, Prime Minster’) it didn’t occur to me and I’d never heard of the battle either.

  13. Thank you for the blog. A little horrified that you thought Finnegans Wake was Beckett, not Joyce. Perhaps better get back to Oxfam before they sell those copies. I’m going to hang up my crosswords and get back to some proper reading.
  14. 21m, so about average difficulty for me.
    The term “salami” to describe a type of negotiating tactic is very common in my particular nook of the City. The battle was my problem.
    Syllogisms are more fun when they’re false. My favourite:

    Some cars are red.
    My car is red.
    Therefore my car is some car!

  15. A bit over two hours (but actually the last hour or so was spent entirely on AFLOAT, for which I never did understand the wordplay correctly. Like z8b8d8k I was also trying to make AOLIAN fit for a while). The rest went in fairly smoothly, and I saw the hidden word right away (judging by who didn’t, that must be a sign of weak thinking). Actually I continue to be amazed by what seems easy and what turns out to be hard, and how much that can differ for different people, irrespective of their general prowess.
  17. A DNF for me, even though SALAMI was one of the possibilities I considered at 21, I couldn’t recall the tactics or the battle. Otherwise I worked at it off and on all day. For my sake, I’m glad others shared some of my difficulties, mostly in the SYLLOGISM, AFLOAT corner & CONTRAVENE, CIMEMA and SAFARI/HAVATI/etc corner.
  18. Failed, with a laughable and desperate guess at 21d. Salami tactics are certainly new to me. I got the wrong end of the stick with the clue and assumed we were looking for a battle formed by shortening a form of tactics, so finally torpedoed myself with the battle of DELAYI – which really is ridiculous.
  19. Quite happily pottered through most of this in 45 minutes, at which point I was left with 9ac and 6d.

    After an hour looking at them on and off, threw in the towel, and got 9ac using Chambers Word Wizard. 6d was amongst the list of possible matches, but it took a trip here to find out why. If you didn’t know the word, wasn’t this clue nigh on impossible?

    I’d argue that 21d fell into the same pretty-impossible category, except that we’ve had the battle before, and I half-remembered it.

    COD 18d.

    1. You’re right about the difficulty of these answers – from my solving experience today I’d add 16D if you can’t think of at least one of the authors.

      On the other hand, I’d expect people tackling the Times crossword to either know what a syllogism is or accept that they probably should have done. I guess that’s my version of the funny looks I got from older solvers at the championship if I expressed bafflement over some literary reference (fortunately, distinguishing Joyce and Beckett wasn’t required too often).

  20. 20 minutes. Like welsh_jon was stuck on 6 and 9. I did think AFLOAT and then SYLLOGISM followed as only thing that would fit but I didn’t get the wordplay for the first and didn’t know what the second meant, so spent 5 minutes agonising over these. (Personal note for Cheltenham – spend 1 minute agonising then put them in and put your hand up – as (on a good and lucky day) it could be the difference between the final and a near miss.Also lost a couple of minutes on SALAMI – never heard of the tactics
  21. Dont like the new Times website for the crossword. so will carry on coming here…
    nice puzzle. struggled to see utopian and afloat but got there in the end!
  22. Bizarre puzzle as far as I was concerned – most of it trivial but got irredeemably stuck on AFLOAT, SYLLOGISM and SALAMI. PB calles the omission on the indefinite article in the AFLOAT clue cheeky: I’d call it unfair – certainly as PB suggests it is needless. I don’t think SYLLOGISN is a good candidate for a cryptic definition as a matter of fact.

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